They had reached a rocky part of the desert, sharp stones underfoot which lacerated Paul’s shoes. When the shoes were gone, the rocks tore into his feet. Every step became such agony that Paul didn’t notice the camel until he almost walked into it.

  It was dead. If not for the flies, it would have looked like a lump in the ground.

  Sana sniffed it.

  ‘It died recently,’ she pronounced.

  ‘Is it ours? The one that ran away?’

  Sana showed him the embroidery on the bridle.

  ‘Bishareen.’

  A cold prickle of fear went down Paul’s back.

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘I have seen it.’

  Her words carried a weight of knowledge that made Paul wonder what other things her young eyes had seen. He looked around the empty landscape, as desolate as the craters of the moon. No sign of any living thing.

  ‘It must have wandered off from a caravan and got lost,’ he said.

  That earned him another inscrutable look from Sana.

  ‘Bishareen do not travel alone.’

  ‘Well, I cannot see any.’

  ‘You do not see them in the desert. Not until they want.’

  Paul kicked the camel’s corpse.

  ‘If it was still alive, it might be some use to us.’

  Sana squatted beside the camel and took out Bastiat’s knife. She put the point against its belly, then folded both hands over the pommel of the knife and pushed hard. Blood and bile spilled out of the hole she had made. The smell made Paul want to vomit, but he clenched his teeth. There was so little fluid in his stomach, he could not afford to lose a drop.

  With deft motions, Sana sawed open the camel’s underside. A bloody mass of guts slithered into the sand. Sana plunged her arms in to the elbows. She found the stomach and cut a hole in it, then reached in with the cup from the flask and scooped out the contents.

  She gave Paul the cup.

  ‘Drink.’

  It contained a green, fibrous liquid. The smell was indescribable. The taste was worse, like drinking out of a latrine pit, he imagined. Paul swallowed it as if it were clear spring water. The sensation of moisture in his mouth and throat was sheer bliss. He thrust his arm into the stomach and scooped out another cup of the stuff.

  They spent much of the morning dissecting the camel. Paul had thought that the hump was where the beast stored its water, but when he cut it open he found fatty tissue. He cut strips of meat off its flanks, which Sana stretched out to dry in the sun. They continued on their journey.

  The desert had become a maze of rocky hills and gullies, which made it impossible to keep a straight course. Each route looked the same. Paul’s sense of direction deserted him; he began to feel certain he had seen places before. He tried to change course, but the landscape never varied and the feeling of going in circles grew more oppressive.

  His vision started to fail. One eye had grown infected, weeping a yellow pus that dried and crusted the eyelid shut. The other was half-blind from the glare. The world was a place of shapes and vague outlines, half-glimpsed like a dream.

  He was convinced they were not alone. He could sense a presence beside him, a shadow on the sand that vanished every time he looked. Sometimes it spoke to him, though it used different voices to confuse him. He thought it was the bird-headed god, or perhaps Abasi, or his mother.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ he mumbled. ‘It says there is water over the next hill.’

  Sana gave him a dark look. ‘The desert is stealing your mind.’

  The liquid he’d drunk from the camel’s stomach tormented him. The refreshment had lasted as long as it took to swallow, but the taste remained in his mouth and throat like a festering sewer. It roiled his intestines and shot agonising cramps through his body. When he tried to eat a piece of the dried camel meat, he could feel it sitting in his belly like a lump of poison.

  By the second morning, Paul knew they wouldn’t survive. It wasn’t a sudden realisation. It had crept up on him as they trudged through the darkness, seeping into his soul like mist. Morning brought the final proof. Before sunset, he had marked their position by a conical hill in the distance. He had walked all night, but when the sun rose the hill was as distant as it had ever been.

  Strength left him. He dropped to the ground and sprawled out as flat as a corpse. He told himself it was only for a few hours, then they would resume the march – that there might be a well, or even the coast, a few miles distant – but he knew it was a lie. This was where he would die. Perhaps in a thousand years some traveller would find his bones, as ancient as the pharaohs. Perhaps no one ever would. His vision blurred to darkness, and his last thought was that death would be a blessed release.

  *

  The pain in his belly woke him. The camel fluid had spread like fire through his guts, burning agony shooting through him.

  I must be alive, he thought, otherwise I couldn’t wish I was dead.

  Or perhaps he was dead, and his body had started to rot from the inside.

  He rolled over and tried to vomit. His stomach heaved until he thought the muscles had burst, but nothing emerged. He rolled and writhed like a demented animal. He came to rest a few inches from Sana.

  A fly crawled over her eyelid. Her face was still, peaceful; he was certain she was dead. Then she breathed. She was sleeping the sleep of an exhausted child. Her eyes fluttered open. She saw Paul and her smile was guileless but fearful.

  Paul could not let her die in the desert. Not while a breath remained in his body. He forced himself to stand.

  ‘Come on.’

  They had been walking for an hour when Paul stepped in a soft and yielding substance, utterly alien on that flinty ground.

  It was a heap of camel dung. Sana was studying it.

  ‘This is recent. And look . . .’

  His eyes hurt too much to glance at the sun to orientate himself. He had no idea where the tracks led.

  It hardly mattered. Whoever had travelled this way would surely have water and food – a way out of the interminable desert.

  Not a mile further, the tracks went over the lip of a hill into a round crater. The floor was strewn with boulders, so large Paul wondered how they could have got there. Then he saw the well. Not the mud hole where Bastiat had died, but a well with a stone rim, a wooden frame and a canvas bucket tied to a rope.

  Paul stumbled down the slope, tripping on the loose stone and cackling like a hyena. Sana followed. Paul dropped to his knees beside the well and threw in the bucket. He felt it go taut as water flooded into the container. He began to heave, but he was so weak he could barely manage the weight. Sana joined him. Even with both their strength, they struggled. The well was deep. At last, Paul saw the gleam of sunlight on water as the bucket rose to the rim.

  On the far side of the well, one of the boulders moved. The surface of the stone rippled and rose.

  The boulder turned into a man. Then another, and another, until the field of stones had spawned a dozen men.

  The rocks were camels, hobbled and covered with tawny cloth awnings to disguise them and shade them and their riders from the sun.

  Paul let go of the rope. The bucket of water slithered down the well and splashed to the bottom.

  The men were Bishareen Arabs: lean, strong and well armed, with dark skin and long black beards. They used their captives with brusque practicality. They raped Paul, and he suffered it, and afterwards he thought he should be grateful to Lefebvre for teaching him to endure such pains. Then they gave him water from the well, and set Sana to help the wizened old woman who prepared their food. When evening came, they bound Paul and prepared to set out.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Paul asked his captor.

  The Bishareen Arab tightened the rope around Paul’s wrists. He fastened the loose end to his camel’s saddle, so that Paul would have to trot along behind. Sana was put on a shorter halter fixed to Paul.

  ‘We go to Gondar.’

  INDIAN OCEAN, 1806

  A

  s the Requin came alongside the Diamond, Adam only had eyes for the man on her quarterdeck, the man he had crossed an ocean and braved a hurricane to find: Jean Lesaut.

  It was not hard to identify him. He was dressed in extraordinary fashion, like a French courtier from the previous century. He wore a curled white wig, a long purple coat that appeared to be made of silk, and a cocked hat fringed with white feathers that ruffled in the breeze. His shoes sported ostentatious silver buckles. A sky-blue sash stretched across his chest, and a star of silver lace gleamed on his left breast. If you had met him in the gardens of Versailles, before the revolution, you would have thought he was overdressed.

  But though he looked like a fop, he was no fool. With the Diamond dismasted and battered, Lesaut did not drop his guard. His ship was cleared for action. His men crouched by their guns, stripped to the waist. Adam could smell the smoke from the slow matches, and the tang of powder in the air.

  The Diamond shuddered as the other ship bumped against her hull. Ropes were thrown and made fast. Whooping and cheering, the French sailors swarmed over the side. They herded the Diamond’s crew into the ship’s waist, brandishing pikes and boarding axes.

  A tanned lieutenant accepted Adam’s surrender. He said little, but confiscated Adam’s sword and led him aboard the Requin to the great cabin. Two sentries in red uniform coats stayed to watch him.

  He studied the cabin, searching for any clue that might link its occupant with the slaughter at Nativity Bay. Adam had spent half his life in ships’ cabins, but never one like this. The walls were hung with paintings in lavish gilded frames. Lesaut’s tastes in art ran to hunting scenes and nudes. The hunts were visceral and bloody, with hounds ripping open a fox’s throat or sinking their claws into a deer’s hide. The nudes were voluptuous women, lounging on beds with legs spread and leaving nothing to the imagination.

  The door opened. Lesaut entered briskly, carrying an oilskin bundle that he tipped onto the table. The Neptune sword, together with the dagger and the sketch of Mary. Adam rose from his seat at the sight, but a warning glare from the sentry pushed him back.

  A steward took Lesaut’s hat and coat. Lesaut settled himself into a chair behind the desk and called for wine. He had a craggy face, deep-lined by years on the quarterdeck, and eyes that sparkled with dark purpose. He must be nearly old enough to be Adam’s grandfather, but he was still handsome enough to attract looks from women half his age. He smelled of rose water.

  ‘You must forgive my delay,’ he said in perfect English. ‘I was making arrangements for your crew.’

  ‘Thank you for your concern,’ said Adam in perfect French.

  Lesaut’s mouth twitched, as if indulging a private joke.

  ‘You prefer we speak in French or in English?’

  ‘You are the victor. When I have you captive aboard my ship, we will speak my language.’

  ‘A shame. I always enjoy the chance to practise.’ Lesaut studied his captive. ‘Adam Courtney. I have heard of you. Son of the great Admiral Sir Robert Courtney?’

  There was no point denying it.

  Lesaut held the Neptune sword up to the light, studying his reflection in the pommel.

  ‘A beautiful weapon – though now, maybe, it is not so useful.’ He pointed to the fractured stump and gave a thin smile. ‘Like your ship, non?’

  Adam didn’t answer.

  ‘This sword belonged to your father?’

  ‘It has been in my family for eight generations.’

  Adam sat motionless, his gaze boring into Lesaut’s face as if he might read the secrets hidden inside.

  ‘And this?’ Lesaut held up the sketch. ‘Your wife?’

  ‘My cousin.’

  ‘She is very beautiful.’

  ‘She is dead. She was killed at her home in Nativity Bay, on the east coast of Africa.’ Adam held Lesaut’s gaze. ‘I believe you know it.’

  Adam could see every pore in the man’s face. At the mention of Nativity Bay, Lesaut flinched; the restlessness in his eyes skipped a beat, a sudden stillness before he remembered himself.

  ‘I have been to Nativity Bay,’ Lesaut allowed.

  ‘And what did you do?’

  Lesaut gave him a keen, appraising stare. He looked as if he was wrestling with something on his mind.

  ‘You say it was your family who lived there?’

  ‘Did you kill them?’

  ‘Non.’

  Lesaut was about to continue when a cry from the deck above came through the open skylight. It was the scream of a man in pain.

  ‘What is that?’

  All Adam’s senses were alive at once. Had his crew decided to fight? Had they managed to throw off their captors and seize weapons? If not, it would be a massacre.

  But the chaotic noise of battle did not erupt – only one man in absolute agony. A tendril of smoke spiralled through the skylight, bringing the noxious smell of burned flesh.

  Adam remembered what Captain Verrier had said at dinner in Cape Town:

  ‘You know what he does to the crews he captures? He brands them.’

  Adam sprang to his feet. On the table, the Neptune sword was in easy reach. The jagged point of the broken blade was more than sharp enough to ram through Lesaut’s chest.

  Lesaut sat back in his chair, unconcerned. Adam knew that if he grabbed for the Neptune sword, the guards would shoot him dead before he touched it. Even then, he might have risked it. But to kill Lesaut would be to destroy his only hope of finding the truth of what had happened at Nativity Bay.

  ‘This is not the law of war,’ Adam snarled.

  ‘Indeed,’ Lesaut agreed. ‘It is purely business. You know how much it costs me, each time I have to repair my ship after battle? If your seamen encounter me again, they will think twice before they decide to fight.’

  Another scream sounded from the deck. Adam’s crew were stout men, and none would want to show weakness in front of the French. Adam could only imagine how much pain they must be suffering.

  ‘But I am an honourable man.’ Lesaut turned the sword so that the hilt pointed towards Adam. ‘If you give me your parole, your promise not to attempt escape, I will give your sword back. You will have a cabin, and every courtesy that is due your rank.’

  The sword lay on the table between them, the sapphire aimed at Adam’s heart. The facets of the gem reflected his face a hundred times over.

  Adam reached for it. His fingers touched the hilt, that so many Courtneys before him had held. The familiar electric current ran up his arm.

  He spun it round so it pointed back towards Lesaut.

  ‘I will not make a promise I have no intention of keeping.’

  Lesaut did not look surprised. ‘I admire your honour. But . . .’ He gave an airy wave through the cabin windows at the expanse of empty ocean around them. ‘Your ship is a wreck. Your crew are captive. What will you do?’

  ‘Whatever I can.’

  Lesaut shrugged. ‘As you wish. Ça ne fait rien. I will lock you away like a common prisoner.’ He ran his fingers along the sword blade, a connoisseur admiring a masterpiece. ‘And I will keep the sword.’ He pried at the sapphire with a long fingernail. ‘This jewel alone is worth more than your entire ship.’

  On deck, another man screamed as the hot branding iron was plunged into his skin. Adam felt the anger surge inside him. For all Lesaut’s manners and aristocratic dress, he was little better than a pirate.

  ‘The difference between you and me,’ Adam said, ‘is that you fight for money, while I fight for my country’s honour.’

  Lesaut shrugged. One of the guards stepped forward with a pair of manacles.

  ‘A man fights for what he does not have.’

  *

  Adam had many hours to regret his decision. Lesaut locked him in the brig like a lowly prisoner, wrists shackled, guarded day and night. In deference to Adam’s rank, the Frenchman did not brand him – but the ordeal of listening to his men being disfigured was almost worse punishment. It lasted longer than he thought he could endure. Adam would rather have endured the pain himself a thousand times than make his crew suffer for his folly.

  He had no hope of escape. He had lost his ship, his crew and his sword. The thought of the Neptune sword in Lesaut’s hands, the gems being prised out and the gold melted down, made him almost burst with frustration.

  Sometimes, in the pitch-black night of the hold, the darkest thoughts crept from the deepest recesses of his soul. Adam held them back. He had to bide his time – and save his strength for the next battle.

  He did not know what course they were steering. But he had lived all his life afloat; he could feel a ship’s rhythms in the creak of every plank. After five days, he sensed a new urgency in her handling, and guessed she was coming into port. An hour later, he felt the splash of her anchor vibrate through the hull.

  There were only two ports in the Indian Ocean she could have reached in that time: Île de France, or Île Bourbon. He guessed the former. As the guards led him onto the deck, he was greeted with the most picturesque harbour he had ever laid eyes on, a paradise. Every cloud had been scrubbed from an azure blue sky. The air was pure and wholesome. Around the broad harbour, whitewashed houses with green verandas and trellised windows lined the slopes of the basalt blue mountains that ringed the bay. One of the mountains rose almost sheer to a rounded summit, like a giant thumb thrust out of the earth. The slopes were lush with vegetation, running with streams that cascaded down the rugged rocky precipices.

  Adam barely noticed. His attention was on the Diamond, coming in behind them under a jury-rigged sail – and on the harbour’s defences. Two batteries guarded the mouth of the bay, while a citadel on the eastern shore commanded the approach with her cannon. He remembered Captain Talbot’s verdict: The harbour at Port Louis is quite impregnable. Even if Adam could escape his prison, if he could somehow commandeer a ship, he would never get out past those guns.